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| The three great colonizing powers of
the Old World first to
raise the standard of civilization within the limits of North America
were France, England, and Spain. The French made their earliest
settlements in the cold and inhospitable regions of Quebec; the English
at Jamestown, Virginia, and at Plymouth, Massachusetts; and the
Spaniards on the barren sands of Florida. To the French belongs the
honor of discovering and
colonizing that portion of our country known as the Valley of the
Mississippi, including all that magnificent region watered by the
tributaries of the
Great River. It is true that more than one hundred years earlier
(1538-41) the Spanish explorer, De Soto, had landed on the coast of
Florida,
penetrated the everglades and unbroken forests of the south, finally
reaching the
banks of the Great River, probably near where the city of Memphis now
stands. Crossing the river, he and his companions pursued their journey
for some distance along the west bank, thence to the Ozark Mountains
and the Hot Springs of Arkansas, and returning to the place of his
death on the
banks of the Mississippi. It was a perilous expedition indeed,
characterized by
all the splendor, romance and valor which usually attended Spanish
adventurers of that age. De Soto and his companions were the first
Europeans to
behold the waters of the Mississippi, but the expedition was a failure
so far
as related to colonization. The requiem chanted by his companions as
his remains were committed to the waters of the great river he had
discovered died away with the solemn murmurs of the stream, and the
white man's voice was not heard again in the valley for more than a
hnndred years. De
Soto had landed at Tampa Bay, on the coast of Florida, with a fleet of
nine
vessels and seven hundred men. More than half of them died, and the
remainder made their way to Cuba, and finally back to Spain. Four years before the pilgrims "moored their bark on the wild New England shore," a French Franciscan, named Le Caron, penetrated the region of the great lakes of the north, then the home of the Iroquois and the Hurons, but a French settlement had been established at Quebec by Samuel de Champlain in 1608. This was followed by the establishment of various colonies in Canada, and the hardy French adventurers penetrated the country by tlie way of the St. Lawrence and the lakes. In 1625 a number of missionaries of the Society of Jesus arrived in Canada from France, and during the succeeding forty years extended their missions all along the shores of Lake Superior. In 1637 a child was born at the little city of Laon, in France, whose destiny it was in the fullness of time to be instrumental in the hands of Providence in giving to the world a definite knowledge of the grandest and most fertile region ever opened up to civilization. That child was James Marquette, the descendant of a family of Celtic nobles. He entered the Society of Jesus when seventeen years of age, and soon conceived a desire to engage in the labors of a missionary among the Indians. He sailed for Quebec in 1666, and two years later founded the mission of Sault Ste. Marie at the Falls of St. Mary. The winter of 1669-70 he spent at Point St. Ignatius, where he established another mission. Here the old town of Michillimackinac, afterward called Mackinaw, was founded. It was from Indians of the different tribes who came to this mission that he received some vague intimations of the great river - the father of all the rivers. He at once conceived a desire to penetrate to the banks of the wonderful river, and carry his missionary work to the tribes which he had learned inhabited its borders. He applied to his Superior, Claude Dablon, for permission to "seek new nations toward the Southern sea." The authorities at Quebec were equally desirous of having new regions explored, and therefore appointed Louis Joliet to embark upon a voyage of discovery. Joliet was a native of Quebec and had been educated in a Jesuit College. He had at the age of eighteen taken minor orders, but had abandoned all thoughts of the piiesthood and engaged in the fur trade. He was now twenty-seven years of age, with a mind ripe for adventure. He left Quebec, and arriving at Mackinaw found Father Marquette highly delighted with the information that they were to be companions in a voyage which was to extend the domain of the King of France, as well as to carry the Gospel to new nations of people. The explorers, accompanied by five assistants, who were French Canadians, started on their journey, May 13, 1673. Marquette has himself recorded in the following simple language their feelings on this occasion: "We were embarking on a voyage the character of which we could not foresee. Indian corn, with some dried meat, was our whole stock of provisions. With this we set out in two bark canoes, M. Joliet, myself and five men, firmly resolved to do all and suffer all for so glorious an enterprise." They coasted along the northern shore of Lake Michigan, entered Green Bay, and passed up the Fox river, carrying their canoes across the Portage to the "Ouisconsin," now called Wisconsin. At Lake Winnebago, before crossing the Portage, they stopped at an Indian village, which was the furthest outpost to which Dablon and Allouez had extended their missionary work. Here they assembled the chiefs and old men of the village and told them of the objects of the voyage. Pointing to Joliet, Father Marquette said: "My friend is an envoy of France to discover new. countries, and I am an ambassador from God to enlighten them with the truths of the Gospel." The Indians furnished two guides to conduct them to the Wisconsin river. It is related that a tribe of Indians endeavored to dissuade them from pursuing their perilous journey by telling of desperate and savage tribes that they would meet; that the forests and the rivers were infested with frightful monsters; that there were great fish in the rivers that would swallow up men and canoes together, and of a demon who could be heard from a great distance, and who destroyed all who approached. Unmoved by these frightful stories, Marquette, Joliet, and their five brave assistants, launched their little canoes on the waters of the Wisconsin, and moved slowly down the current. After a lapse of seven days, June 17th, 1673, they reached the mouth of the Wisconsin and glided into the current of the Mississippi, a few miles below the place now known as Prairie du Chien. Here, and on this day, the eye of the white man for the first time looked upon the waters of the Upper Mississippi. Marquette called the river "The Broad River of the Conception." The Indian name is derived from the Algonquin language, one of the original tongues of the continent. It is a compound of the words Missi, signiiying great, and Sepe, a river. The explorers felt the most intense joy on beholding the scene presented to their enraptured vision. Here was the great river whose waters somewhere thousands of miles away flowed into a Southern sea, and whose broad valley was the fairest and richest in the world, but unknown to civilized man, save as an almost forgotten dream or a vague romance. They had solved one of the great mysteries of the age in which they lived. As they glided down the stream the bold bluffs reminded Marquette of the "castled shores of his own beautiful rivers in France." The far stretching prairies alternating with forests, on either side, were adorned in all the wild glories of June. Birds sang the same notes that they had sung for ages amid those "forests primeval," while herds of buffalo, deer and elk were alarmed and fled to the dense retreats of the forest or the broad prairies beyond. Not until the 25th June did they discover any signs of human habitation. Then, about sixty leagues, as they thought, below the mouth of the Wisconsin, at a place where they landed on the west bank of the river, they found in the sand the foot-prints of man. Marquette and Joliet left their five companions in charge of the canoes and journeyed away from the river, knowing that they must be near the habitation of men. They followed a trail leading across a prairie clothed in the wild luxuriance of summer for a distance of about six miles, when they beheld another river and on its banks an Indian village, with other villages on higher land a mile and a half from the first. The Indians greeted the two white strangers, as far as their ability permitted, with a splendid ovation. They appointed four of their old men to meet the strangers in council. Marquette could speak their language. They informed him that they were "Illini" (meaning "we are men"), and presenting the calumet of peace, invited them to share the hospitalities of their village. Marquette told them of the object of their visit, and that they had been sent by the French, who were their friends. He told them of the great God that the white man worshiped who was the same Great Spirit that they adored. In answer, one of the chiefs addressed them as follows: "I thank the Black Gown Chief (Marquette) and the Frenchman (Joliet) for taking so much pains to come and visit us; never has the earth been so beautiful, nor the sun so bright as now; never has the river been so calm, nor so free from rocks, whiuh your canoes have removed as they passed; never has our tobacco had so fine a flavor, nor our corn appeared so beautiful as we behold it to-day. Ask the Great Spirit to give us life and health, and come ye and dwell with ns." After these ceremonies the strangers were invited to a feast, an account of which is given by Marquette. It consisted of four courses. First, there was a large wooden bowel filled with tagamity, or Indian meal, boiled in water and seasoned with oil. The master of ceremonies, with a wooden spoon fed the tagamity to their guests as children are fed. The second course consisted of fish, which, after the bones were taken out, was presented to the mouths of the strangers as food may be fed to a bird. The third course was a preparation of dog meat, but learning that the strangers did not eat that it was at once removed. The fourth and final course was a piece of buffalo meat, the fattest portions of which were put into the mouths of the guests. The stream on whose banks took place this first interview between the explorers and the untutored Indians, after parting with their guides, was the Des Moines river, and the place of their landing was probably about where the town of Montrose is now located, in Lee county, Iowa. One of our sweetest American poets has rendered Marquette's narrative in verse, as follows:
Marquette and Joliet remained at the Indian villages six days, and were then accompanied to their canoes by an escort of six hundred Indians. Invitations were extended to the strangers to renew their visit, after which the explorers embarked in their boats and floated on down the stream, passing the sites of future great cities of the valley, and passing the mouths of the Missouri and Ohio rivers, and as far down as the mouth of the Arkansas, Marquette named the Missouri river Pekitanoui, or "Muddy Water," on account of the now well-known character of that stream. After extending their voyage to the mouth of the Arkansas, where they found a village ot the Arkansas tribe, they ascended the Mississippi to the mouth of the Illinois. They ascended the latter river to its source. Along 0this stream they found many villages of the Illinois, or Illini, a large and powerful tribe, who were subdivided into five smaller tribes - the Tamaroas, Michigamies, Kahokias, Kaskaskias, and Peorias. The country between the Illinois and Mississippi rivers was inhabited by the three last named tribes. The Michigamies resided in the country bordering on Lake Michigan, and the Tamaroas occupied the territoiy now included in the counties of Jersey, Madison and St. Clair, Illinois. Kaskaskia - also designated by the early explorers as "La Vantum" and "Great Illinois Town" - was the largest of the villages, containing, according to Marquette, seventy-five lodges. Without the loss of a man, or any serious accident, the party reached Green Bay in September, and reported their discoveries. Marquette made a faithful record of what they had seen and the incidents of the voyage. That record has been preserved. The report of Joliet was unfortunately lost by the upsetting of his canoe while on the way to Quebec. At the request of the Illinois Indians, Marquette soon returned and established the mission of the Immaculate Conception at La Vantum. In the spring of 1675, on account of failing health, he started to return to Green Bay. "While passing along the shore of Lake Michigan, conscious that he was nearing the end of his earthly labors, he observed an elevated place near the mouth of a small river. He told his companions that the place was suitable for his burial and requested them to land. On that lonely and desolate coast, May 18, 1675, at the age of thirty-eight, James Marquette ended his last earthly voyage, and received burial at the hands of his devoted companions. Two years later some Indians of the mission at Kaskaskia disinterred his remains, and conveyed them in a box made of birch bark, with a convoy of over twenty canoes, to Mackinaw, where they were reinterred at the mission church. The post was abandoned in 1706, and the church burned. The place of burial was finally lost, and remained lost for two hundred years. In May, 1876, the foundations of the old Jesuit Mission were accidentally discovered on the farm of one David Murray, with a number of church relics, the mouldering remains of the great missionary, and explorer, and a cross with his name inscribed upon it. Joliet, after his return to Quebec, became again a trader with the Indians. His services were rewarded by tha French government by the gift of the island of Anticosta, in the Gulf of St. Lawrence. Little after this is known of him. He died about 1730. The reports given of the discoveries of Marquette and Joliet, served to encourage other adventurers to engage in the eftort to extend their explorations. Robert La Salle, a French navigator, who was bom at Rouen about the year 1635, had long cherished a project of seeking a route to China by way of the Great Lakes. Before the retum of Marquette and Joliet, he had explored Lake Ontario and visited the different Indian tribes. In 1675 he went to France and obtained from the government a grant to a large tract of land about Fort Frontenac, the exclusive right of traffic with the Five Nations, and also a patent of nobility. He laid before his government his desire to explore the Mississippi to its mouth, and take possession of all the regions he might visit in the name of the King of France. His plans were warmly approved, and he was provided with the means for carrying them into execution. In July, 1678, he returned to Fort Frontenac, soon afref established a trading house at Niagara, and visited the neighboring Indian tribes for the purpose of collecting furs. He engaged the services of thirty mechanics and mariners and built the first ship tor the na,vigatibn of the lakes. It was called the Griffin, and was a bark of sixty tons. Having been joined by Louis Hennepin and Chevalier de Tonti, the latter an Indian veteran, on the 7th of August, 1679, they launched the Griffin on Niagara river, and embarked for the valley of the Mississippi. They crossed Lake Erie and Lake St. Clair, reaching Green Bay September 2d. For the purpose of relieving himself of some pressing financial obligations at Montreal, La Salle here engaged for a time in collecting furs with which he loaded the Griffin, and sent it in the care of a pilot and fourteen sailors on its return trip, with orders to return immediately; but the vessel was never heard of afterward. He waited until all hope had vanished, and then, with Father Hennepin, Chevalier de Tonti, the Sieur de la Motte, and about thirty followers, began again the voyage. They ascended the St. Joseph in canoes to the portage, and carried their barks to the Kankakee, a distance of six miles, descended the Kankakee and the Illinois until they reached an Indian village on the latter stream, at the expansion of the same, known as Lake Peoria. The village was situated on the west bank of the lake, and must have been passed by Marquette and Joliet on their voyage up the river in 1673, although no mention is made of it by them. La Salle, Hennepin, Tonti and their followers landed at Lake Peoria, January 3d, 1680. The Indians received them hospitably, and they remained with them for several days. Here a spirit of discontent began to manifest itself among the followers oi La Salle, and fearing trouble between his men and the Indians, they crossed the river and moved down about three miles, where they erected a fort, which La Salle named Fort Crevecoeur (heart-break) a name expressive of La Salle's sorrow at the loss of his fortune by the disaster to the Griffin, and also his feelings in the fear of mutiny among his men. The party remained here until in February, when Tonti was placed in command of the post, and Hennepin charged with a voyage of discovery to the sources of the Mississippi. La Salle returned on foot with three companions to Fort Frontenac for supplies. On his arrival he learned of the certainty of the loss of the Griffin, and also of the wreck of another vessel which had been sent with resources for him from France. Father Hennepin, with two companions, Picard du Gay and Michel Ako, on the 29th of February, 1680, embarked from Fort Crevecoeur in a canoe down the Illinois to its mouth, which they reached in a few days. They then turned up the Mississippi, reaching the mouth of the Wisconsin, April 11th. Above this point no European had ever ascended. They continued the voyage, reaching the Falls of St. Anthony, April 30, 1680. Hennepin so named the falls in honor of his patron Saint. When they arrived at the mouth of St. Francis river, in what is now the State of Minnesota, they traveled along its banks a distance of 180 miles, visiting the Sioux Indians, who inhabited that region. The river Hennepin so named in honor of the founder of his order. In his account of this voyage, Hennepin claims that they were held in captivity by the Indians for about three months, although they were treated kindly by them. At the end of this time a band of Frenchmen, under the leadership of Seur de Luth, in pursuit of furs, had penetrated to this part of the country by the way of Lake Superior. The Indians allowed Hennepin and his companions to return with the traders. They descended the Mississippi to the mouth of the Wisconsin, passing up that stream and down the Fox river, and so on through Green Bay to Lake Michigan. Hennepin went to Quebec, and thence to France, where, in 1683, he published an account of his explorations and a description of the region of the Upper Mississippi. In 1697 (two years after La Salle's death) he published an enlarged work, in which he claimed that he had descended the Mississippi to its mouth. His faithlul description of the valley for a time gave him credit for veracity, but the impossibility of reconciling his dates, and other circumstances, are by the best authorities regarded as stamping his claim false. Before the time this work was published, as we shall see, La Salle had descended the Mississippi to its mouth. Hennepin explained his long silence as to his exploration to the mouth of the Mississippi, by claiming that he had feared the enmity of La Salle, who had ordered him to follow a diiferent course, and had also prided himself upon his own claims as being the first European to descend the Mississippi to the Gulf of Mexico. Father Hennepin died in Holland, about the year 1699. We now return to the further adventures of the brave and intrepid La Salle. He returned to Fort Crevecoeur in the latter part of the year 1680, to find that Tonti had been abandoned by his men, and obliged to take refuge among the Pottawattamies. He spent another year in collecting his scattered followers, finally succeeded, and on the 6th of February, 1682, he had reached the mouth of the Illinois. As they passed down the Mississippi La Salle noted the different streams tributary thereto. They erected a fort near the month of the Ohio, and a cabin at the first Chickasaw bluff. On the 9th of April they entered the Gulf of Mexico. They reascended the river a short distance, founded the Fort of St. Louis, took possession of the whole valley in the name of France, and called it by the name of Louisiana, in honor of the king. La Salle, having accomplished much for e glory of France, now retraced his steps northward. After spending one year about the great lakes, actively engaged in laying the foundations of French settlements in the new regions he had discovered, in November, 1683, he reached Quebec, and soon after embarked for France. The government, with marks of great esteem, bestowed upon him a commission placing under his authority all the French and natives of the country, from Fort St. Louis to New Biscay. An expedition, with four vessels and 280 persons, was fitted out for the colonization of Lousiana; it sailed August 1, 1684. Associated with La Salle in this expedition was Beaujeu, as naval commander. The mouth of the Mississippi was the objective point, but by mistake the fleet passed on northward. When the error was discovered La Salle desired to return, but Beaujeu persisted in advancing. Dissensions arose, and La Salle, with 230 colonists, disembarked. This was in February, 1685. A fortified post, which was called Fort St. Louis, was established, and attempts made at agriculture, but without success. Attempts were made to reach the Mississippi, which they thought near, but failed. La Salle and his followers traversed the wilderness toward New Mexico, and in January, 1687, by sickness and disaster, his party was reduced to thirty-seven. Some of these, following Beaujeu's example, revolted. La Salle, with sixteen men, then determined to reach the country of the Illinois. Two men, who had embarked their capital in the enterprise, were bitter in malignity toward the leader of this unsuccessful expedition. Their feelings found some gratification in the murder of a nephew of La Salle. The latter sought to investigate as to the death of his relative, but only shared his fate, as one of them fired upon him from ambush, and the heroic La Salle fell, the victim of quarrels and dissensions among his own followers. This event happened after he had passed the basin of the Colorado and reached a branch of Trinity river, in Texas. We have thus briefly outlined the part taken by this energetic and adventurous explorer, in giving to civilization a knowledge of a region that was destined to constitute the richest and most productive portion of the American continent, if not indeed of the world. |
